Tag Archives: Broken Britain

This is the clearest explanation I’ve heard regarding the debt crisis and the credit bottleneck that is stifling the world’s economy.

Helga is the proprietor of a bar. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now , but pay later.

Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers’ loans).

Word gets around about Helga’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Helga’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in town.

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands Helga gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer – the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Helga’s gross sales volumes and paper profits increase massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Helga’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

He is rewarded with a six figure bonus.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS. These “securities” are then bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as “AA Secured Bonds” are really debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses

The traders all receive a six figure bonus.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga’s bar. He so informs Helga. Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons but, being unemployed alcoholics, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Helga cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Helga’s 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Helga’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations; her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the government.

They all receive six a figure bonus.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who’ve never been in Helga’s bar.

I have been watching the news today with more than a degree of disbelief. Don’t get me wrong, I do not pretend to actually have any real working knowledge of the banking world, but surely, it won’t do any long-term good to put off the guys who can actually do their jobs, and do them well? I am but a mere lowly paid mortal as are probably most of my readers here, and have more than a healthy degree of dislike for the banker’s bonuses and pay scales in general, BUT, when you are hired to do a job for a set wage, which it would appear Mr Hester was, and then someone, NOT your boss turns around and says, “sorry mate, yes you’ve worked hard and done what was expected of you, but you can’t actually have what was promised you”, then I have a problem with that.

The amounts do defy belief in a way, his bonus alone is more than enough to set me and my son up for life both in security for life and a business of our own, BUT, in a way it is all relative, not one of us would like to take on a job then be told that we won’t be able to have what we are due, would we?

It’s not as though he awarded himself the bonus, a whole board of folks did that, including one notable board member representative from our own UK Government!

I find it incredibly unfair that this poor guy, who has simply set out to achieve what he was paid to do at the end of the day, has been singled out and lambasted by those very same money-grabbing oiks who have systematically claimed whatever they could get away with at our expense.

I did a small straw poll today amongst those of us to whom that bonus alone would have been a lottery win, and not one of them was actually against the guy getting what he was due, despite the vast difference in pay and lifestyle, so to me this is yet another example of a political smokescreen for something else.

Think about it folks, if the leader of RBS quits, ( and who right now could blame him?) who else is going to want to take up the reins, knowing they will get publically bullied and lambasted by guys ( and probably gals) who are already living quite comfortably off the state ( ergo us) and will no doubt have very lucrative ( and secretive) arrangements made in the private sector to fall back on once their political careers are over?

I don’t have an answer to this problem, but do feel for the one poor guy who got picked on to suit someone else’s agenda.

After reading my friends’ blog posts, I am absolutely furious. ANOTHER RADIO 4 RANT , where she vents quite rightly about a radio program where a “panel” reckoned money cannot buy you happiness, ( yeah right, THEY I am sure don’t have to choose between food and heat each week), and her follow-up one here …. I FEEL LIKE I AM SWIMMING IN CUSTARD , where she describes a situation I am sure most of us will sympathise with right now, no matter how thrifty you are or how many extra layers you put on, you cannot win. The more you “save” or skimp on, the higher the costs for the little you do use go!

How DARE the UK Government keep bleating on one hand that “we are all in this together”, when we blatantly are NOT. The bills for THEIR multiple homes are paid for BY US. They say we all have to tighten our belts, it’s all for our own good in the long-term, etc. If that is the case, then why oh why are we STILL donating mega amounts of cash abroad? I was always taught that charity begins at home, the British public is extremely charitable when we need to be, all on our own, we do NOT need to be forced into it. IF we are all feeling a bit more wealthy, then no doubt we will donate more, ALL BY OURSELVES.

And I am SO sick of the greedy utility companies constantly bleating about their rising wholesale costs, repair bills, taxes, you name it, they invent it, then seeing their quarterly PROFIT statements rising ever higher. Now correct me if I am wrong here, but aren’t profits listed AFTER outgoings?

And if all these so-called “Green” taxes are supposed to be helping our environment, then what exactly are they being spent on?

Is there some huge “air cleaning machine” somewhere out there that we don’t know about yet?

And please, don’t anyone dare tell me it goes on alternative energy, because with all the subsidies that those companies get paid they are NOT real alternatives they are more profit-making (and environment destroying) devices.

It really wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it comes out in a few years time that all these so-called “green” government ministers also had huge shareholds in these “wonderful” new schemes that we are forced to pay for whilst we go without heating, lights, and in far too many cases these days, food!

Do these suited, well-heeled clowns actually KNOW or care that our own old folk, many of whom fought for our country in years gone by, will most likely die this winter, AGAIN?

Do they know or care that far too many people who are already on the bread-line will simply get forgotten and end up on the streets, purely because their meagre incomes cannot keep up with the rising costs?

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for fair taxes and paying our way BUT PLEASE politicians, you are leaching the lifeblood from our country mainly from those who do the hardest work and can ill afford the relentless hits!

Going back to my friends’ post on the radio show, yes, I am afraid money CAN buy you happiness, it can sure take the stress out of everyday life, allow for a few treats like a hot meal now and then, and make you feel secure, if only in your home and basic living standards, but hey, isn’t that something else our government keeps insisting on as well, somewhat contradictorially? Eat well, live well?

Let us keep just a little bit more of our hard-earned and maybe, just maybe, we will be able to do just that!

This one emerged after I bought a load of free-range eggs really cheaply, they were “close” to their supposed use-by date!

The idea of cooking an egg in a potato comes from years ago when I was in the Scouts, it is one of those meals we tried to do in tin foil on a campfire, and after wracking my brain to come up with something slightly more interesting than fried/boiled/scrambled eggs, I vaguely remembered this and thought I may as well try it out!

INGREDIENTS

per person

1 medium/large Jacket Potato

1 egg

Optional Extras:

1 portion Baked Beans

METHOD

Wash your potato. Put your oven on full power/heat to pre-heat it for the next stage.

Cook it until almost soft inside (test with a knife blade). I started mine off in a microwave for speed. The time to do this will very much depend on how big your potato is, mine as pictured above, spent 12 mins on high in my old tired microwave, an oven would usually take quite a bit longer.

Carefully, as it will be HOT, cut off the top of the potato about a third of the way down, ( standing it pointy end up), and scoop out an egg-shaped space in the middle. Break your egg into a cup ( this ensures you don’t have a bad one and thus ruin the potato), then pour the whole egg into the potato cavity you have made. Replace the potato lid you cut off, and remembering to keep it upright still, place in the pre-heated oven for around 15/20 minutes, or until the potato skin goes crispy!

Once crispy on the outside, the egg inside should be cooked through, place on a plate and serve with beans if desired!

Voila, one simple tasty supper!

Cooking Time – approx 45 minutes, less if you start off in a microwave

Cost – approx 35p/ 63p per person, it will depend on where you get your ingredients!

So, anything the government doesn’t like, it appears to block? lol who’d have thought it!

While these government petitions are probably more smoke and mirrors, there is an apparent pledge to debate those that reach 100000 signatures in parliament. If the country wants to be kick started then removing these unnecessary and punitive green taxes from all fuel costs will go some way to making all goods and services cheaper and allowing the common man to become mobile again Please sign it if you can. If nothing else seeing those in parli … Read More